


After the storm

by karlamartinova



Category: The Pretender
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 22:22:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karlamartinova/pseuds/karlamartinova
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>... things changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the storm

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by all that activity in the fandom, because guys, we are finally getting more!

She dreams about Jarod that night. They’re both gray and she sees sweat glistering on his forehead. He asks her about the kiss and instead of answering, she kisses him. It turns into a nightmare then. The hurricane tears them apart, tears the world apart and nothing remains. She wakes up with a start, her heart thumping in her ears, her pyjamas soaked.

“Damn you, Jarod,” Parker mutters as she tries to collect herself, to erase the dream from her consciousness. Yes, it scared her but for some reason, the most troubling thing about it, was the kiss. She touches her lips briefly, and then pulls her hand away. She can’t think about it, cannot let Jarod crawl inside her head. He would destroy everything she had built, the icy walls that are supposed to keep her sane.

She washes him out with a glass of bourbon, one and then second and then she stumbles into her shower, and stands under icy cold water. It sobers her up and Parker feels weak and small because he’s out there making her question her decisions. Jarod never had that right, she never gave it to him and she hits the wall imagining his face.

It doesn’t help but she pretends it does.

Next morning Sydney follows her around with his “I’m a shrink” face and she masters long strides to shake him off. She hopes she’ll master off shaking Jarod of her mind too. “I still remember the little girl who gave me my first kiss,” he had told her like it meant something, not the kiss, the words, and she had wanted to laugh, but she didn’t. Instead she had let him inside her head and now he’s there all cozy and infuriating.

There’s a bottle of aspirin on her desk, and for the sake of her sanity, she doesn’t even try to think about it. She drowns it down with whiskey and after a while, her hands really stop shaking. Parker stares at them, at her perfect nails and she looks for the future that never really was there. She blames Jarod for it, blames him for questioning her life, her choices.

It’s another day from hell, it only gets worse when she gets summons to Florida Court. She doesn’t open it, it’s another reminder of him, and in her head she decides he doesn’t have the right to have a name. He’s a thing, a science experiment that went wrong and she calls him that in front of Sydney and everyone who’s willing to listen.

He means nothing, he could drop dead and she would go home and open herself a bottle of champagne.

“One day you would regret calling him like that,” Sydney tells her with a sad look in his eyes and she laughs, her heart cracks open for him. He really does not have a clue and she’s thankful, incredibly thankful.

“As you say, Freud,” she throws back and turns her back on him still afraid of him seeing. They cannot know about a storm that made her like this. She grips her car keys, blood drips through her fingers and she thinks about a boy with white rabbits. It’s a sign that tonight she can’t go home. Parker needs to end this bloody nonsense, to stop her head from hurting for nothing, from her throughs to orbit around Jar..., him.

It’s a sickness that needs a cure and she finds it. It burns her throat, softens her heart and she smiles more often that not. She isn’t brooding anymore. There’s “hey baby” and “want to get out of here” and she only laughs. He’s there too, of course, and she might be drunk but she would never overlook someone she’s chasing 24/7. Not today though. She makes it an exception.

He flinches when he sees her approach, but holds his ground. It makes her smirk.

“Hey, did we switch the roles?” she wanted to curse him, call him names, but he’s there and she’s drunk, and it makes everything so much different. She could pretend she never saw him, that he never followed, and this could be nothing. Like it is.

“I didn’t realize,” Jarod answer gripping his can of Dr.Pepper. He looks angry and sad at once, and Parker doesn’t know anyone else who could make these emotions blend so well. He hates her, she can see that, the veins in his neck are pulsing and she stops herself from reaching for them. It would make him human.

She laughs, throws her head back when doing so and catches him stare. Maybe they’re playing a game, and maybe she had just won.

“One more, whatever my friend fancies,” she calls to the bartender who hears her through music and talks, and he nods to Jarod who chooses something she had not a chance to hear.

Their drinks arrive and she leans on the bar next to him, it feels unnatural, like a really bad dream. They’re not supposed to be this close. He’s the back she chases, the white rabbit who always finds himself a hole. She watches him doing so at this very moment, looking around the room, looking for sweepers or a place to hide. He still manages to hold her gaze and cling his glass against hers.

Only then does she realize she called him a friend.

“Cheers, Miss Parker,” he says after he found what he was looking for, he seems a little bit more comfortable and she doesn’t like it. She liked him looking caught, maybe even scared. She wants that back, the power. He had followed her here tonight, but she had caught him, she was the winner, and she wasn’t ready to give it up yet.

“Cheers,” she sends him a flirty smile, her hand tracing the hem of his leather jacket. Her fingers touch his chest and she sees him inhale sharply. He catches her hand in his then. The anger is back on his face, it makes him weak. Emotions are dangerous, they uncover secrets you were never ready to tell. They don’t call her the Ice-queen for nothing, she wanted that title.

“What do you want, Parker?” Jarod asks, her hand still in his, and his teeth gritted together.

She smiles, she has him. He had started this game but now he’s loosing and he wants to stop. Parker isn’t done playing yet.

“Me?” she asks innocently and makes that one step that makes the distance between them inappropriate. “You followed me here, Jarod. I should be the one asking you this question.”

She pulls her hand out of his then, uses it to scratch at his neck. “What do you want from me, Jarod?” she whispers in his ear, their bodies closer than ever before. Her pulse quickens the same way she feels his, it’s a perfect harmony, and the exact moment she realized she overstepped the line. She wanted the cure, instead she found more sickness. The way Jarod suddenly grips at her sides lets her know she’s not the only one ill.

Something happened to them in that damn shack. The storm outside, the storm inside, they had mingled together and made them fly in-between like rag-dolls. Jarod doesn’t have the power and neither does she. She needs to escape, to find a cure as far from him as possible.

She tries to run, but his hold on her doesn’t weaken, it’s stronger and Parker looks up at him.

“Do you see it now, Miss Parker?” he asks her, and sadness prevails. He’s powerless before her and she could call the Centre, have him locked up forever and never ever have to deal with this. It’s a preferable option, one she’s ready to take but Jarod holds her against him and she feels their heartbeats in one motion.

“Let me go, Jarod,” she pleads with him, unable to force any ice in her voice. She regrets tonight, regrets the drinks, regrets her life, her choice and it’s all because of him. She hates him more than ever before, but he releases her instantly and she feels lost. Instead of analyzing it, she runs. Out of the bar, of her life, from him and it’s all mingled together.

Parker hopes he won’t follow, that she wouldn’t find him waiting at her door, and when he isn’t there, she feels like she had lost something. But somehow, after this, it’s easier. They acknowledge it, let it exist, but never ever talk about it.

She calls him lab-rat, he makes her chase after her family secrets. They drive each other nuts but they never mention the storm, it’s a rule, the first rule of the game they started to play when the world decided to put them on the opposites sides. And it works, for years, it’s their defense. But rules are to be broken, and this one isn’t an exception.

–

He breaks it on Carthis. He talks about “us” and the storm outside is very much the same one that had caused it. Miss Parker almost finds it fitting. Jarod talks about turning points too, and she suddenly remembers the night at the bar, when he takes her hand in his, she wants to slap him.

She doesn’t, instead she makes a choice.

Jarod does too, and suddenly the first rule means nothing to him. “You can’t ignore it forever, Miss Parker,” he tells her through one of their midnight conversations, his voice is sad but hopeful and she grips the phone with an overwhelming urge to throw it against a wall.

“To hell I can’t,” she yells out in anger, and the silence on the other side of the line lets her know he won. She acknowledged there’s something between them, that the “us” isn’t a nonsense he made up to torment her. It exists and he just got all the proof he needed.

This time she does throw the phone against the wall. It won’t help her though, because Jarod will be there any minute and she needs to pack and run. She has a suitcase ready in the back of her closet, but when she opens it, her eyes fell on the picture he had painted for her. She pulls it out, sits down on the floor and waits for Jarod.

She cannot run, cannot outrun the time, the memories. It’s impossible.

“You shouldn’t come here. Lyle has me followed,” it’s a half-hearted attempt, she knows. Jarod knows, of course he knows.

He grins. “They’re chasing me around San Francisco Airport. They had some very persuasive camera footage,” he says and then his grin falters, when he notices the picture. The sigh sounds very tired, every bit as the way she feels. When he sits on the floor next to her, it’s very welcomed, as are his arms around her.

She leans her back on him, feels his chin on her shoulder and it’s the most natural feeling in the world. They’re both looking at the painting and Parker knows, it’s Jarod giving her time to say goodbye, and maybe she should argue, stay here and die for no reason. But she knows he won’t let her, and she’ll never be ready to see him die for her.

“We should go,” he whispers and his breath tickles her cheek. She turns to him then, their faces millimeters apart and the kiss is very different from the one from her dream. It’s sweet and soft, and Jarod’s kisses are promises she doesn’t want to hear. He gives them, and she knows he will anything in his power to fulfill them.

It’s very easy to leave everything behind. She’ll miss the house, her things, more than anything she’ll miss Sydney and Broots, but she won’t miss her life.

From the forest, they watch black sedans stopping in front of her house. Lyle is screaming orders and men she doesn’t know are kicking her door in. She turns her back and lets Jarod pull her away. The night is clear and she watches the stars hide behind the trees. It’s a very different night from Keys, there isn’t a storm she could blame for hers or Jarod’s actions. It’s them taking their fate in their own hands, and Miss Parker never believed in happy endings, neither does she now.

Life is to be lived, not regretted and when she hears the explosion, she smiles.


End file.
